Angoulême 2012: Friday
Maus on the walls
It’s cold, but sunny in Angoulême. Friday was uncrowded, making it pleasant to cruise the exhibitor’s tents. It hasn’t been a banner year for new comics in French-speaking Europe, but there’s still plenty of work to peruse at the alternative booths, with new books by Aurélie William Leveaux, Isabelle Pralong, Brecht Evens, Olivier Schrauwen, and Alex Barbier having caught the eyes of this visitor as particularly exciting.
Having spent most of my time in the tents in order to avoid the crowds tomorrow, I have yet to visit most of the exhibitions, but let me say this immediately: the Spiegelman retrospective in the Castro building is amazing. Everything you could wish for is there, most of it in the original: a sampling of early East Village Other strips, a generous selection from Breakdowns, including original pages from all the classics: “Malpractice Suite”, “Ace Hole”, “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore”, “Prisoner on Hell Planet”, etc., as well as the original “Maus” short story and several of the iconic auxiliary illustrations to that work.
The Making of a Raw cover
Another wall presents an eye-opening selection of the greeting cards and Garbage Pail Kids collector’s cards that secured him his daily bread as a young cartoonist — a little-seen but essential part of his oeuvre.
Two other walls are dedicated to RAW Magazine, the seminal anthology Spiegelman edited with his wife Francoise through the eighties. The preparatory stages of the collage cover of issue 7 are exhibited along one wall, uniting several of the key contributors to the anthology, while another presents their work on video screens in front of a display case with the entire run of issues.
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| Garbage Pail Kids |
Photostats of the entirety of Maus are mounted in a separate room, accompanied by sketches, reference material, and other items helping elucidate Spiegelman’s work process on his masterpiece without impeding the visitor’s reading experience. A separate display case holds the original photo of Spiegelman’s lost brother Richeu, reproduced in the book, his father Vladek’s immigration form, and a photograph of little Art and his mother Anja in front of their home in Rego Park. There is something incredibly touching about these objects, which bring the crushing reality of the story told in the comics pages home with simplicity.
Objects from life
The rest of the show is devoted to Spiegelman’s generally over-conceived post-Maus work, which pales in comparison. With the exception of his great comics essays — on Sendak, Schulz, Kurtzman, and others — and his charming children’s books, his mature line is clunky, his cleverness running away with his focus, resulting is work that is at best earnest but messy (“The Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@?*!”) or inspired but inarticulate (most of the New Yorker covers), and hermetically postmodern and didactic at worst (“In the Shadow of No Towers”).
But this matters less when the body of the work as a whole shows such intelligence, curiosity, and ambition, something this show makes beautifully apparent.
Angoulême 2012: Saturday
From the Spiegelman history show, mounted in the museum's main hall
Seeking shelter from the crowds in the city center at the museum across the Charente turned out to be a great idea, an elision into comics history. The main exhibition there is Art Spiegelman’s personal selection of comics from the 1830s till today, Le Musée privé. Put together in collaboration with resident comics specialist Thierry Groensteen, and with works borrowed from the Billy Ireland Library at Ohio State, the Glenn Bray collection, and elsewhere, it is the most eloquently curated comics show I’ve seen since the fantastic Masters of European Comics in 2001.
It starts in the 1830s with Töpffer and early European comics before it hits a motherlode of original American comic strip pages — the heart of the exhibition. Knowing Spiegelman’s taste, it is unsurprising that he predictably leaves out several of the great illustrators — most notably Raymond and Foster — but there is so much great material that one quickly forgives him: from McCay and Herriman over McManus, King, Gould and Gray, to Schulz, Watterson, and Thompson, as well as several lesser known and underrated figures such as Milt Gross and Garrett Price.
Then comes the comic books including a broad selection of classics, which — though naturally underplaying the heroic genres — presents much of the cream, with the focus predictably on Mad and EC. Spiegelman not only presents these comics comprehensively, but often with key, iconic pages — Kurtzman’s “Corpse on the Imjin”, Wolverton’s Lena the Hyena cover for Mad, Kurtzman and Elder’s splash page to “Restaurant” from the same magazine, and eye-popping pages from Ingels, Davis, Craig, and the rest of the Usual Gang.
The underground section continues along the same lines, focusing initially and naturally on the Zap artists (though downplaying Crumb) and then switching to a generous selection of Rory Hayes pages as well as Bill Griffith’s recent elegy to the artist. And in an adjoining room hangs the entirety of Justin Green’s “Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary” in the original. Only when the exhibition hits the eighties does it lose height, seeming random in its selection (although you can’t front on Dan Clowes’ “Needledick the Bugfucker”).
As a comics history the exhibition is somewhat idiosyncratic, but as Spiegelman notes in one of the excellent accompanying videos, every cartoonist constructs his own past, and this one’s a particularly cogent and inspiring one — one that locates in humor and subversion the life of the mind.
This year’s festival at Angoulême was a success, both in terms of popular interest and artistic quality. There are no two ways about it. Its director Franck Bondoux reported more than 215,000 guests over the weekend, up somewhat from previous years, and Saturday especially was close to overcrowded, with the main tents temporarily having to close their doors to manage the influx. At the same time, festival president Art Spiegelman not only (co-)curated two extraordinary shows, but also brought a lot of international interest, tempering the francophone myopia that has long plagued the festival (and which I addressed in last year’s report). On the balance, I would call him the best president of the last decade, presiding over one of the best festivals in that same period.
Denis had his beginnings in comics in the late seventies and came into his own in the eighties. He has generally practiced the kind of social satire that became a staple in the new wave of French comics for grownups of those decades, but always in a watered-down, more genre-oriented fashion than his groundbreaking peers — Reiser, Claire Brétecher, Gérard Lauzier, Gotlib, Florence Cestac, Wolinski, and others. His main claim to fame is the series Luc Leroi (1980–2000), which centers on an awkward bohemian and his misadventures in a world of social-climbers — well-executed and occasionally funny, but not exactly material that one would expect worthy of this honor, at least not when (nominally, but clearly theoretically) you have all the still-living, great creators around the world to choose from.
The problem child of many years, manga, however seems finally to have become an orphan. For years consigned to the back of already crowded tents, or out of the way, this year Japanese comics were given a more prominent place in a large tent on the centrally-situated Champ de Mars, but unfortunately had to share it with American superhero comics. It was just as well, I guess, because most of the manga publishers and fans seem to have realized that the festival does very little for them and thus mostly stayed away, leaving visitors with slim pickings indeed: a few booths, a stage with sparsely attended live drawing, and a flat screen exhibition area promising interaction but delivering blandness looped. It was a pathetic, but surely also a natural development for a festival that has never been able to accommodate the admittedly quite different manga subculture under its aegis, and which additionally has seen the emergence in the last five years or so of a more focused competitor in the form of the large Paris-based annual Japan Expo.
At least manga still figured in the official festival awards selected by a jury headed by Spiegelman. Mori Kauro, best known in America as the creator of Emma, won the so-called “intergenerational” (i.e. youth-oriented) award for Bride Stories, while Tatsumi Yoshihiro took the “Views of the World” (i.e. Best Foreign Film) award for the second volume of the French edition of A Drifting Life. In fact, the awardees were largely unobjectionable, with Guy Delisle winning the Best Book award for his Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City and Jim Woodring being awarded the Jury Prize for Congress of the Animals. The “Revelation” (i.e. debut) award went to Gilles Rochier for his lauded piece of youth-oriented social realism TMLP, and Glénat was given the “Heritage” (archival) award for their hideous edition of Carl Barks’s complete Disney comics. (See the full list neatly arranged here).
From this perspective Angoulême is doing about as well as any event of its kind anywhere in the world. Its problem, but also its main asset, is that it aims so widely, fathoming if not the whole of comics, then as close as you get to it in one place: from the signing galleys of mainstream houses Glénat or Soleil to the smoke-filled back rooms of the increasingly interesting fringe festival F.OFF (now in its third year!); from the throngs of kids flooding the Monde des bulles tents, colored pencils in hand to contemporary stars cartooning to live music at the so-called Concerts de dessin; from the gathering of the comics historian nerd mind in the Platinum Group at the comics museum to that of the hipsters at the Nouveau monde booth afterparties; with visits from the cultural minister in addition both to a former and a coming presidential candidate, all seeking to bolster their image at this, one of the largest cultural events in France, and with the Francophone comics community out in force, mingling with visitors from all seven continents, this remains the comics Babel, for better or worse.
Angoulême 2012: Aftermath
Charcoal drawing by Anke Feuchtenberger in the Cartoonist/Painting show at the Comics Museum
This year’s festival at Angoulême was a success, both in terms of popular interest and artistic quality. There are no two ways about it. Its director Franck Bondoux reported more than 215,000 guests over the weekend, up somewhat from previous years, and Saturday especially was close to overcrowded, with the main tents temporarily having to close their doors to manage the influx. At the same time, festival president Art Spiegelman not only (co-)curated two extraordinary shows, but also brought a lot of international interest, tempering the francophone myopia that has long plagued the festival (and which I addressed in last year’s report). On the balance, I would call him the best president of the last decade, presiding over one of the best festivals in that same period.
Yet problems persist and one is tempted to see them exemplified by this year’s Grand Prix winner, Jean-Claude Denis, who will preside over next year’s fortieth anniversary. It is not that the Angoulême academy of past Grand Prix winners, which selected Denis, has all that much say in the planning and execution of festival, but their selection of what is arguably the highest honor formally bestowed on comics makers worldwide is still strongly symbolic, and the president each year has a unique chance to shape its artistic direction and eventually to point the way forward as part of the academy that chooses his or her successors.
From Denis' Luc Leroi book "Toutes les fleurs s'appellent Tiaré" (2000)
But then, the Angoulême academy has always tended to award their peers, mostly those of the seventies and eighties generations who continue to dominate its ranks, which has the further problem of favoring male French creators by a wide margin. In 39 years of existence, and among 44 inductees (certain years have seen more than one person selected), 34 grand prix winners have been French, with even Belgium trailing far behind at four, and the rest of the field consisting of three Americans, one Italian, one Swiss, and one Argentine. Of all 44, only two are women. Although hardly more than moderately popular or critically acclaimed, Denis is a neat fit: he studied, and has frequently collaborated with the artistically congenial Martin Veyron (Grand Prix 2001) and plays in a band with Dupuy and Berberian (Grand Prix 2008) with whom he has also collaborated on a book.
So the Grand Prix this year seems a bit of a step back, but one could hardly have expected this august group to have selected a foreigner two years in a row, and the many younger, already deserving French or France-based Grand Prix prospects — there were rumors about David B., Christophe Blain, and Marjane Satrapi — will surely get it in the future. And in any case, this year’s Spiegelman presidency demonstrated in spades the international potential of the position. It just may happen that once the younger, more internationalized generation that is starting to join get more of a say, we will see a more international, gender-equitable academy.
In any case, there genuinely seemed to be more international guests and visitors at this year than any time in recent memory, and the programming gave international comics a lot of space, with panels and interviews focusing on significant Anglophone creators and editors from the eighties till now — Brian Azzarello, Charles Burns, Eddie Campbell, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, Francoise Mouly, Joe Sacco, Spiegelman, Craig Thompson, and others (Chris Ware was supposed to appear but had to cancel). And in a welcome innovation, most of these people were, as far as I could tell, even competently interviewed —otherwise a rarity at the festival.
Add to this wide-ranging programming featuring European cartoonists (Fred, Guy Delisle, Maximilien Le Roy, Francis Masse, Lorenzo Mattotti, José Muñoz, Isabelle Pralong, Joost Swarte, and many more) and exhibition showcases — within and without the festival’s own framework — focusing on such diverse areas of the world as Armenia, Palestine, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, and Turkey, as well as others in group shows, and you have a rich international tapestry, even if the individual efforts were highly uneven in quality.
Entering the Mangasie tent
The problem child of many years, manga, however seems finally to have become an orphan. For years consigned to the back of already crowded tents, or out of the way, this year Japanese comics were given a more prominent place in a large tent on the centrally-situated Champ de Mars, but unfortunately had to share it with American superhero comics. It was just as well, I guess, because most of the manga publishers and fans seem to have realized that the festival does very little for them and thus mostly stayed away, leaving visitors with slim pickings indeed: a few booths, a stage with sparsely attended live drawing, and a flat screen exhibition area promising interaction but delivering blandness looped. It was a pathetic, but surely also a natural development for a festival that has never been able to accommodate the admittedly quite different manga subculture under its aegis, and which additionally has seen the emergence in the last five years or so of a more focused competitor in the form of the large Paris-based annual Japan Expo.
The French edition of Delisle's award winner
In general, however, the awards — or Fauves as they were dubbed when Lewis Trondheim overhauled the system in 2006 — are losing their focus. Trondheim’s much-needed transition into the selection of a handful of essentials from a list of nominees has been modified and tweaked each year, resulting in an increasingly confusing and commercially determined field. Complaints from mainstream publishers that the awards primarily catered to “alternatives” resulted in a special Fauve for “Best series” a few years ago; the following year, each “essential” was given a title that confuses more than it elucidates (see above); and now, in a move of blatant pandering the festival has inaugurated a special award for best crime comic, sponsored by their commercial partner the French railroad company SNCF. Ever a headache for the festival, these constant changes in themselves devalue what remains Europe’s most prestigious comics awards. (And don’t even get me started on the evolution of the audience/SNCF/Fnac award — I wouldn’t be able to finish). It seems high time for someone in the festival’s steering body put their foot down.
As initially suggested, the selection of Denis for the Grand Prix can (somewhat unfairly, but still relevantly) be seen as symptomatic of several of these issues, but above all the ongoing struggle with the past not only of the festival, but of the comics community at large. So much has changed in the last twenty years — commercially as well as artistically — that most institutions are still playing catch up.
Signing at the L'Association booth, open this year!
From this perspective Angoulême is doing about as well as any event of its kind anywhere in the world. Its problem, but also its main asset, is that it aims so widely, fathoming if not the whole of comics, then as close as you get to it in one place: from the signing galleys of mainstream houses Glénat or Soleil to the smoke-filled back rooms of the increasingly interesting fringe festival F.OFF (now in its third year!); from the throngs of kids flooding the Monde des bulles tents, colored pencils in hand to contemporary stars cartooning to live music at the so-called Concerts de dessin; from the gathering of the comics historian nerd mind in the Platinum Group at the comics museum to that of the hipsters at the Nouveau monde booth afterparties; with visits from the cultural minister in addition both to a former and a coming presidential candidate, all seeking to bolster their image at this, one of the largest cultural events in France, and with the Francophone comics community out in force, mingling with visitors from all seven continents, this remains the comics Babel, for better or worse.
Check out the Comics Journal/Metabunker photo series from Angoulême here.
If you've been in Angoulême, France recently
... then you most likely were there for the now-wrapped-up 39th annual Festival international de la bande dessinée. For three giddy days high-ranking cartoonists are borne on floats through Angoulême's medieval streets and the populace cheers, throws flowers, smothers them with kisses and makes them hold symposiums. From what I've seen, these are people with interesting faces and they can wear hats and scarves with great aplomb.
Or something like that. Last year the formidable Art Spiegelman won the Grand Prix de la ville d'Angoulême, an honor that brings with it all kinds of responsibilities, like putting together most of this year's show. So in 2012 he was honored for a lifetime of work in comics' inky vineyards with a career-spanning show of his original art; pages and pages of Maus, New Yorker covers, Garbage Pail Kids, Raw magazine, etc. And, with the able help of Bill Kartalopoulos, Spiegelman curated a Private Museum of cartoons that inspired him or that tickles his fancy. In this show were gems like Justin Green's epochal Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary, works by Rodolphe Töpffer, Chris Ware, Walt Kelly, George Herriman, Bill Watterson, Daniel Clowes, Jack Davis, Lionel Feininger, Ernie Bushmiller, Caran d'Ache, Patrick McDonnell, Los Bros, Hernandez, and on and on. In fact, the list went on so far it reached me, and the cartoon below was slipped into the show.
It'll be there, mingling with the quality, till May 6 2012, in case you find yourself in Angoulême, France.
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